Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Baseball!

For my birthday, my colleagues and I went to a Japanese baseball game. I was struck by a few things, including:

1) The size of the stadium. We went to one of the two major stadiums in Tokyo, and forget the lack of fancy new frills (a la Bob Herbert's recent column), the stadium was tiny. It felt more like the Durhman Bulls or Redding Phillies than like like even an old school American major league stadium (like the Vet, Yankees Stadium or Three Rivers).

2) Everyone had little umbrellas (since the team was the Tokyo Swallows), and so would stand and wave them on cue whenever anything exciting happened

3) The ice cream cone I got was so frozen solid it was almost completely inedible

4) The following sign, which is something like "beware of foul balls." Apparently, the Japanese are so engrossed in either the game or their electronic devices that they need to be constantly reminded of this.

5) The fact that it otherwise looked exactly like an American baseball game